Elizabeth Lowell (10 page)

The reflexive tightening of his body in response to his thoughts was communicated to Zebra. Sensing his agitation without understanding its source, she began to shy at the breeze stirring through the belly-deep grass as though it were a yellow-eyed cougar stalking her.

Janna talked to the mare in a soothing, husky voice that worked on Ty’s aroused senses like repeated, silky caresses. He clenched his teeth when she shifted position and leaned around him in order to stroke Zebra’s neck soothingly.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Janna said, keeping her voice low and reassuring. “She’s only like this when there are Indians or cougars around. I haven’t seen any sign of cats in the valley. Maybe Mad Jack didn’t cover his trail out of here well enough and Cascabel followed it.”

“Doubt it,” Ty said in a clipped voice. “That old man has been outsmarting trackers for more years than I’ve been alive. Zebra’s probably just nervous about having two riders.”

She made a sound that had no meaning except to soothe the restive mustang.

By the time they approached the slit in the cliffs that surrounded the valley, Zebra no longer shied at every shadow, Janna had relaxed so that she no longer jerked back from the inevitable contact with Ty’s nearly naked body—and his jaw ached from being clenched against the hot sensations radiating through his body from every accidental, brushing contact with her.

And it seemed that she touched him everywhere, except in those places where he ached to the point of pain.

Silently Ty endured the continual brush of Janna’s body against his as they went toward the cleft. They rode alongside the stream until it spread out into a small slough and vanished, leaving not even a trickle to enter the stone slot that was the valley’s only outlet. There was nothing about the mouth of the cleft to suggest that it was any different from the hundreds of other narrow, barren gouges in the eroded flanks of the huge plateau. That, and the fact that the narrow, twisting passage was both difficult and uninviting for a horse, was why the valley had remained Janna’s secret.

The slit in the rocks looked like the entrance to hell, but Ty watched it approach with a feeling of relief. When the opening was thirty yards away, he could bear Janna’s unintentional sensual torment no longer. With a feeling of relief, he slid off Zebra and away from the fiery brush of a woman’s body.

“Wait here,” he said curtly. “I’ll check out the trail.” He was gone before she could put her objections into words.

Inside the cleft it was cool, damp, dusky. A few shallow pools left by recent rain showers reflected the dark red, oddly stained cliffs that towered above the floor of the narrow canyon. Overhead the sky was reduced to a thin blue string thrown carelessly between the cliffs. In the places where black lava replaced sandstone, the cleft darkened until it was both somber and eerie, as though night had condensed and taken a solid form on the face of the land itself.

There were no tracks at all in the dry watercourse, not even those of wildlife. Ty wasn’t surprised by the lack of animal signs. He had expected to find nothing. Most wild animals had an instinctive fear of being trapped somewhere that lacked room to run or places to hide. What did surprise him was that Mad Jack had left no more trail than if he had flown from the secret valley.

In fact, Ty found it impossible to believe that the old man had gone through the cleft at all.

The passage itself was familiar. Ty had made it a point to memorize everything about the slit that was the difference between the valley being a haven for them or a trap with no exit. Yet each time he walked the cleft he felt a deepening admiration for Janna, who had found and used a passage whose secret had been lost to the Indians for hundreds of years, perhaps even thousands. He doubted that any Indian had used the cleft at all since the coming of the horse several hundred years before.

Or perhaps the valley hadn’t been lost by the Indians but simply avoided as a spirit place where mortal men shouldn’t go, a place of the People Who Came Before. Within the twilight confines of the slot canyon, it would be very easy to imagine malevolent spirits waiting in ambush for anything foolish enough to stray inside the black stone jaws.

The narrowest point of the cleft was not at the entrance to the valley but about a third of the way toward the open land beyond. At the stricture, both canyon walls were of a dense, black, fine-grained stone that cracked in long parallel columns. Water had polished the stone into a slick, shiny mass that, with the addition of a layer of fine mud, was almost as slippery as ice. Unlike Mad Jack, Janna had never found a way to avoid leaving tracks over that segment of the slot, which was why she had always taken on the passage just before or just after a rain, when any tracks she left would be washed completely away by the runoff stream.

That was another thing Ty admired. Few people who knew the country would have had the courage to test the stone slit when clouds massed over the plateau and water was running down its sides in rushing veils. Fewer people still would have had the skill to read the land and weather correctly enough to survive negotiating the narrow slot. He wondered how many times Janna had waited, eyeing the muddy rush of water and calculating her best chance to pass through without leaving a sign or being drowned.

Warily he looked up the uneven walls where debris lodged twenty or thirty feet higher than his head. The thought of the dangerous path she had taken to get him into the hidden valley made sweat start on his body. He remembered the black clouds, the pelting rain...and nothing more. He only knew that she had taken an enormous risk while getting him to a safe place to heal.

In fact, she had taken one hell of a risk for him, period, since the first moment she had begun wiping out his trail so that Cascabel would lose his prey. If the renegade ever found out how his prisoner had truly escaped, her life wouldn’t be worth a handful of cold spit.

Ty half walked, half slid over the cleft’s slick bottom. Once he was past the place where black walls pinched in, the cleft opened out slightly again. He moved quickly, leaving very little trace of his passage. There was no other sign of life within the steep canyon. When the gloom brightened, announcing the end of the slot, he went to the deepest area of shadow and eased forward until he could look over the fan of debris that washed down from the plateau’s edge, creating a sloping skirt that led to the flatlands beyond.

For several minutes he remained motionless, studying the landscape for any sign of movement. There was no motion but the ragged race of cloud shadows over the earth. No bird was startled into flight. No raven scolded an intruder in hoarse tones. No shape of man or horse separated from cover to ghost over the land. If there were anyone about, he was even better hidden than Ty.

After ten minutes he withdrew from the entrance to the slot and returned to Janna. She was waiting precisely where he had left her, for she knew the importance of keeping the secret of the slit canyon and the hidden valley beyond.

“All clear,” he said, answering the question in her eyes. “Nothing has been in or out since the last shower.”

Even though she had expected nothing else, she couldn’t conceal her relief. Without the secret valley she would have no place to hide, no sanctuary to keep herself alive during the wild country’s cold winters.

He saw her relief, guessed at its source and had to restrain himself from telling her not to worry, she wasn’t going to have to spend another winter hiding in the valley, she was leaving Indian country and that was that. But he said nothing, because she would have argued with him, and arguing against the inevitable was a waste of time.

As far as he was concerned, Janna would no longer live alone. No white woman should have to exist like a savage, fearful of every shadow and without even the company of other human beings when danger threatened.

Ty had decided that he would take her to Sweetwater or Hat Rock or Santa Fe or even all the way to Denver, if it came to that. It was the least he could do for the orphan girl who had saved his life.

To his surprise, Janna slid down from Zebra and walked to the cleft. As always, the mare followed her.

“Aren’t you going to ride?” he asked.

“Too dangerous. That narrow stretch must still be slick from the last rain.”

“We rode in double that way.”

“Someone had to keep you astride Zebra. We’ll mount after the canyon widens again.”

He didn’t argue. No matter how important it might be not to leave human footprints, he had dreaded the thought of going over the slippery black rock while mounted bareback and double on an unbroken mustang.

In the end it was the very narrowness of the canyon that kept him from falling. He simply levered himself along by acting as though he were trying to push the two sides of the canyon farther apart with his hands. Janna, more accustomed to the tricky stretch, knew where there were handholds and niches to use in maintaining her balance.

Zebra had the advantage of four feet—if one slipped, there were three to take its place.

“How did you manage on horseback?” he asked when he reached a wider point in the slit and Janna came alongside.

“There was no other choice.”

He thought about that for a moment, then nodded slowly, understanding that was how she had managed to survive out here on her own. She believed that there was no other choice.

But there was.

“With all your books, you could be a teacher,” he said as he swung aboard Zebra once more, scraping his knee against the canyon wall in the process.

She grabbed his arm and swung up behind him. “Not enough kids except in towns.”

“So?”

“I don’t like towns. They seem to bring out the worst in people.”

He opened his mouth to argue, realized that he agreed with her and felt trapped. “Not all the time,” he muttered.

She shrugged. “Maybe I just bring out the worst in towns.”

“Do you really plan on spending the rest of your life out here?” he demanded.

“Unless you keep your voice down, the rest of my life won’t amount to more than a few hours,” she said. “These walls make a dropped pin echo like a landslide.”

He turned around and glared at her but said nothing more, except for a muffled word or two when his legs scraped against narrow points in the cleft. Her slender legs were in no such danger, and in any case were enveloped by protective folds of cloth. Even so, Ty had an acute appreciation of the warm flesh beneath the folds, especially when she rubbed against him as she adjusted to Zebra’s motions.

Cautiously Ty urged the horse out of the cleft, keeping to shadows and high brush wherever possible, trying to break up the telltale silhouette of horse and rider. They had gone no more than a mile when they cut across tracks left by a group of unshod ponies. The horses had moved in a bunch, not stopping to graze or to drink from the few puddles that remained after the previous thunderstorm.

From the distance between sets of prints, Janna guessed that the horses had been cantering.

“That’s Cascabel’s horse,” she said in a low voice.

She pointed to a set of larger hoofprints that had been all but obliterated by the rest of the group. Though the horse had once been shod, it had no shoes any longer. All that remained were vague traces of nail holes around the rim of the untrimmed hooves.

“He stole two Kentucky horses from an officer at the fort over by Split-rock Springs,” she continued. “One of the horses used to be the fastest horse in Utah Territory.”

“Used to be? What happened?”

“Cascabel ran it to death trying to catch Lucifer. He takes better care of the second horse. It won’t last much longer, though. It’s a paddock horse, bred for grooming and grain. All it has out here is grass and a big renegade with a whip.”

“Yeah, and that big renegade is too damn close for comfort.”

Janna chewed silently on her lip for a moment before agreeing. “Yes. This is only the third time I’ve found his tracks on the east side of Black Plateau. I wonder what happened to make him come this far. The ranches he usually raids are in the opposite direction.”

“I’ll bet the soldiers are closing in. They have a real mission where Cascabel is concerned. They’re going to see him hang or know the reason why.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to throw off the uneasy feeling that had been growing in her day by day since the beginning of the summer, when she had discovered that Cascabel had been forced to move his camp. He had chosen to make his new camp on the Raven Creek watershed, a place that was perilously close to Mustang Canyon. Whether Black Hawk had driven Cascabel south, or the soldiers had, or Lucifer had lured him to the red buttes and high plateau and brooding Fire Mountains, it didn’t matter. Janna knew that she couldn’t remain hidden for long once so many eyes started scrutinizing every shadow.

Yet she couldn’t leave, either. She had no place to go.

A woman alone among men was the subject of snickers and speculation and blunt offers of sex in exchange for money or safety. The closest thing she had to a home was the wild land itself. She couldn’t bear to lose it and her freedom in the same blow.

Unfortunately, it was becoming clear that she had no other choice.

Silently Janna guided Zebra in a circuitous route to Sweetwater. When Ty realized where they were going, he turned questioningly to her.

“Hat Rock is closer,” he said.

“I know. I went to Sweetwater last time.”

“So?”

“So Joe Troon won’t be looking for me there.”

“What?”

“I never go to the same town or ranch twice in a row,” Janna explained. “Except for the hidden valley, I never go to the same places at the same time of year or in the same order. If you don’t have a pattern, no one can guess where you’re going to be and lay a trap for you.”

Ty sensed the apprehension behind her calm words. “Did this Troon character try to trap you?”

“Once or twice.”

“Why?”

“Mad Jack’s mine, Lucifer or...” Her voice died as she remembered overhearing Troon bragging about how he would break her in right and then sell her south to a Mexican whorehouse after she led him to Lucifer and Mad Jack’s gold mine. She cleared her throat. “I didn’t wait around to find out.”